Grace - Five Years Old

This week, Grace turned five - one-whole-hand years old!

Grace is living glorious childhood in all its fullness. She often plays outside all morning. When I take her to a new playground, she explores every nook and cranny. She loves building with train tracks and her new marble run. She watches Winnie the Pooh almost every day, memorizing the stories, songs, and each character's personality for fun re-enactment later in the day.

Five years ago, Grace was born so quickly, we nicknamed her "rocket girl" which is entirely ironic because now she does most things slowly. It's as if she used up all her fast juice during labor and delivery and now lives in slow mo.

Sometimes Grace's slow pace is caused by simple disobedience. But, we also think she gets distracted by her rich, inner, daydream world of stuffed animals, made up languages, and imaginary friends.

Grace is often processing the past and shocks us with how much she remembers even from a couple of years ago. She also often plans for the future. (She started telling me almost a year ago that she wanted purple shoes for her birthday so she could dress as Prince Wednesday from Daniel Tiger. You'd better believe she got some purple shoes this week.) 

Because her mind is constantly whirring and her mouth is constantly chatting, Grace gets distracted from the task at hand, and moves from task to task at a glacial pace.

With the "terrible two's" and the "three-nager" year well behind us, Grace has learned to handle her emotions really well, so the past few months she's been calm and happy. She's also become the queen of transition. In the past half year, she's gained a sibling, moved out of her home, flown around the world, and spent about six weeks in Colorado and in California. Isaiah's birth threw her for a loop, but since November, she has learned to embrace transition. She even gets excited about getting on planes, seeing new people, and experiencing new things.

Grace has really grown into her big sister role. Her younger sister, Cora, really leans on her for bravery and Grace has often led her through transition sometimes literally holding her hand to help her. 

Grace also enjoys caring for her brother. She is so proud to be one of his favorite people in the world. When he's fussy, she sometimes says, "Isaiah needs someone to keep him company." And she plays near him which almost always calms him down.

Grace loves all things medical and wants to be a doctor when she grows up (unless Jesus comes back before she grows up in which case she wants to be a ballerina). Anytime there's a new sickness (which happens often with three kids!), she asks many questions to add new info to her medical knowledge.

Getting to use a real otoscope at Nana's clinic

Grace has three stuffed animals, Doggy, Donkey, and Funny Bunny. She refers to them as her triplets, though they are usually different ages, and she throws a birthday party for one of them almost every day. When I was pregnant with Isaiah, she was often pregnant with or birthing one of these stuffed animals. She bathes them, naps them, and feeds them everyday. She even tells me to babysit them sometimes.

Grace, we love you. We love watching you grow up and become more and more you -- our Grace.

Caring for funny bunny

Currently Loving...

These days, I'm currently loving...

FaceApp

Get it on your phone, take some selfies with friends, and run them through the filter. You will laugh so hard! Here are my husband's results - normal, woman, 30 years older, and with a smile pasted on. The old Michael kills me! So so so weird.

My kids' school pictures

At the start of every school term, we walk our girls to the local photo shop owned by a Chinese-Thai man. The shop is old and dark and smells strongly of incense. Piles of paper and supplies cover every surface and there are idols and amulets everywhere along with two of the oldest most yellowed photo printers I've ever seen. He ushers us into the dark, back corner of the shop to take their mug shots school pictures. Their faces clearly show how they feel about the whole thing!

I put these photos through FaceApp. The app must be made just for adult faces because the results were - yikes.

The Chief Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny

I got my hands on my second Gamache murder mystery novel (#4 in the series). I'm enjoying it so much just like I enjoyed the first. I love the author's descriptive writing and the way she builds suspense.

Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth Bailey

The author has lived in the Middle East almost all his life. He takes well-known stories from the four gospel accounts of Jesus' life, teachings, and miracles and explains them through Middle Eastern culture/worldview. The chapter on Jesus' birth (spoiler: he probably was born in a home, not a stable or a cave) and the entire section on interactions with women (spoiler: he's radical, awkward, and empowering) are two highlights. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to do a deeper study of the gospels with culture at the forefront.

Conversation Between a Toddler and Preschooler

Both my daughters are talkative. The last few months, they've started having lengthy, strange conversations between themselves. The other day, I sat them down for their snack and recorded a few minutes of them talking. Here's a one minute snippet of that conversation between my 4-year-old and 2-year-old.

Cora singing: "The more we get together, together, together. The more we get together the happier we'll be." [over and over]

Grace: "Louder please"

Cora: "Ok!" [starts singing louder]

Grace: [a split second later] "SSSHHHHHHH!!! I don't want to hear you!"

Cora: [confused] "Do you want it loud?"

Grace: "No. I want only Jesus to hear you."

Cora: "Well, Jesus isn't here."

Grace: "Yes! Yes he does."

Cora: "No, he isn't."

Grace: [with firm conviction] "Yes, he does hear you. He hears even when people… even when I don't hear you."

Cora: "Excuse me, Grace."

Grace: "Yes, Cora?"

Cora: "Watch this."

Grace: "Ok, I'm watching."

Cora: [loud nonsense words]

Grace: "That's goobledygock."

Cora: [more nonsense]

Grace: Cora, can you please switch back to your English hat? It's English hat time!
(Grace and Cora claim to speak three languages - English, Thai, and Goobledygock. When they switch languages, they call it switching hats.)

~

Now imagine that level of conversation minute after minute, hour after hour, and you have a pretty good idea of what you hear on a "quiet" morning or afternoon at home. We are endlessly entertained.

Kids One Year Ago and Today

We are only 13 months into life in a new country. From what the old-timers tell me, we are still in the very beginning, often rough stages of adjustment to a new language, culture, and home. But, still, it is so good to recognize the progress our family has made in feeling comfortable in our corner of Bangkok.

First family picture in Thailand taken in the outside kitchen of Michael's
aunt's house just a few hours after our plane landed.
Our daughters had no idea of the enormity of the change they were going through!

Over a year ago, in the week leading up to our big, international move and the two weeks after, 18-month-old Cora would not leave my arms. She sat on my hip all day, every day. If I set her down she cried. She watched our house in California, which she'd known since birth, slowly get gutted out as everything she knew went in the trash, sold on Craigslist, or into storage. Most of her toys and books disappeared as they were packed in boxes to be shipped to Thailand.

Then, one day, we got on a plane and arrived in a new very hot, humid place filled with the noises of tropical birds, barking dogs, and noisy motorcycles. She continued to live in my arms for another two weeks.

Whenever Cora saw a motorcycle or a Thai person, she buried her head into my shoulder. Motorcycles were too loud. Thai people were too threatening to her, always wanting to hold her and touch her. Bangkok is full of motorcycles and Thai people, so whenever we left the house, she closed her eyes and buried her face into my shoulder hiding from the world. For two whole weeks!

Both Cora and three-year-old big sister, Grace, threw some massive, category five tantrums during those first few weeks. They were induced by jet lag, no toilet paper in a bathroom, a slippery chunk of mango jumping out of chubby hands and landing on the dirty ground, finding seeds in their oranges, and other things. The whole nine yards. Screaming, flailing, whole body on the ground mom-and-dad-why-did-you-bring-me-here tantrums.

For the first couple of months, Grace completely and utterly refused to speak Thai. She would not say "hello" or "thank you" in Thai when we told her to. She was in utter rebellion and it was sometimes rude and embarrassing.

But, they've adjusted. (They had to!)

Wearing tutus and walking to a friend's house for dinner.

Picking up lunch from street food vendors and biking it home.

The category five tantrums are few and far between. And they are not caused by moving overseas stress anymore. They are caused by normal, irrational toddler and preschooler things like being way too tired before a nap and a parent forcing them to try to pee so they don't wet the bed while they sleep. You know, things like that.

Both girls speak dozens (maybe hundreds? don't keep track.) of Thai words. And they understand far more than they speak. Grace still sometimes refuses to speak Thai, but that's ok. We see her listening and learning and slowly making progress.

Now when we walk through the streets of Bangkok. They each hold a parent's hand. They hardly notice loud motorcycles passing just a couple of feet from them. 

The Thai strangers who used to scare Cora are now our friends and neighbors. They don't fawn over our kids as much anymore because they're no longer a novelty. But, when they do get special attention, our kids ignore it. Or sometimes Cora performs and flirts and sings and speaks Thai to feed the attention. What a difference from just one year ago!

Grace - Four Years Old

Our little Gracie is about to turn four. When I think back on this past year, three words come to mind to describe her. She is organized, creative, and brave.

Watching the clouds roll into the mountains in Northern Thailand.

Grace is organized. She loves order, structure, and logic. This is the quirkiest and funniest part of her personality.

One day I asked her little sister what her favorite color was. She answered "Pink." Then, I asked Grace. She responded, "Red. And my favorite color tomorrow will be orange. And after that, yellow." And so she continued through all the colors in rainbow order.

Grace enjoys creating countdowns for big events. Several weeks before her 4th birthday, Grace told us she wanted to create her birthday countdown 11 days before her birthday. Every day or two, she would check in to ask how many days until her birthday.

One day, I told her that there were 14 days left until her birthday. The next day in the bath after not mentioning it all day, she told me out of the blue, "Mommy, there are 13 days until my birthday. Tomorrow there will be 12 and then the next day, there'll be 11, and then we'll make a countdown!" Lover of order, structure, numbers, and logic to the core.

Grace has also been working hard to figure out how reading works. She knows the sounds of English and Thai letters and she has started to sound out English words. I remember one day after her bath, she asked me what was written on the toilet. "Mogen," I said. She practiced reading it everyday. Then, one day, she read it backwards accurately, "Negom" and laughed. That's when I knew she had figured out how reading works.

Grace is creative and imaginative. Grace loves to talk. She always has ideas, stories, memories, and questions brimming out of her. But, if we give her art supplies, she stops talking (!) and gets lost in her own little world of imagination and creativity. She draws pictures of gardens, the beach, rainbows, and clouds. When she's finished, she sometimes gives elaborate explanations of everything going on in her art.

Grace also loves music and dancing. She particularly enjoys learning Thai kids' songs, even more than English songs, and she loves having dance parties after dark with the lights off, the music loud, and her light up rings flashing.

Grace is brave. I've never felt more proud of Grace than this past year as I've watched her go from being a toddler living in America to a preschooler growing up in Thailand. It's been a hard transition, causing nightmares and category five tantrums. Watching her persevere through all the difficulties and learn to enjoy life here makes us so proud.

Because of her bravery, she's gone from knowing just a few Thai words to being able to understand everything her teachers tell her and beginning to speak a little bit. This past year, she also learned how to ride a bike with training wheels, she went down a water slide all by herself, she rode a pony, and she fed an elephant and a giraffe at the zoo. She is naturally very cautious, so all of these new things were scary to her, but she decided to be brave and ended up enjoying them all.

Grace, Mommy and Daddy could not have thought you up. We love everything about you from your passion for numbers and structure to your love of music and art. We think you're an amazing kid!

Things I Learned in June

I moved from the U.S. to Thailand a few months ago, so I learn approximately fifty new things every day. Here are just a few of the things I learned in June...

Playgrounds in Thailand have all the unsafe but super fun equipment that's long been banned in the USA. Things like merry-go-rounds and see-saws. And my daughters love it all, of course.

Tropical storms are fun! The thunder rumbles deeply and sometimes cracks so loud my heart drops. A single storm can bring dozens of bolts of lightening. The rain falls on our car park's tin roof so forcefully, I have to close the front door to be able to video chat with my parents. When a thunderstorm rolls in, the wind picks up and the temperature cools. After a storm, the air remains cool but becomes oppressively humid and we all sweat buckets. I am loving it all. Except the sweating buckets part.

The Thai word for "socks" is "foot bag." Perfect!

Trying to buy a car in another country is a time sucking, frustrating experience. Thank you, Lord, for easy to use public transportation.

I'm intimidating. I've noticed that when I walk toward a Thai man, he often gets a frightened look on his face and will sometimes even back away! This doesn't always happen, but it's happened often enough for me to notice. 

Why do some men act this way? Are they afraid of me? Am I misreading them? What are they afraid of... that I'm going to start speaking English and they won't understand? Why don't women act this way toward me? 

Street food is ruining my taste buds. I eat Thai street food once or twice daily. Almost every dish I eat is either sweet, sour, salty, spicy, or some combo of the above. Now, when I cook old favorites from life in California, they taste really bland. My husband and I dump on salt, red pepper, even spicy fish sauce to try to bring our old favorite dishes up to our new taste bud standards.

I'm not the only girl with a huge crush on my husband. My one-year-old is obsessed with him too. If I try to take her out of his arms, she screams at me. Daddy's girl through and through.

When I study Thai, I should always pull the eraser first out of my "keep clam" pencil bag. I make so many mistakes. But, that's how you learn, right?

This exists. A few weeks after I took this picture, I sent my daughter outside to put her shoes on. (Shoes are stored outside here.) When I went to help her, I saw one of these nasty critters about a foot away crawling right toward her little hands and feet! And did I mention they're poisonous? In the tropics, always look before you send very young children outside by themselves. Which leads me to my next lesson...

Always look before you pee. The news recently carried two stories of snakes slithering through plumbing into people's toilets. And they weren't garden snakes. No, no. One was a 3.5 meter long python and the other was a one meter long cobra. The python even bit a man's... you'll just have to read this article. Yikes. Always look before you pee.

My three-year-old is brave. When my now three-year-old was three months old, she became very anxious around strangers. Her fear grew and grew until she would scream and cry with anybody but me. I remember when she was one, we tried to get her to accept the church nursery and she cried so hard she threw up!

By God's grace, a lot of hard parental work, and good old-fashioned passage of time, she has mostly outgrown stranger anxiety.

Last month, she started attending Thai preschool. Everyday, she walks half a mile (in this hot, humid climate!), bulky, much-too-pink backpack bouncing on her back, all the way to school. She stays three hours immersed in a language she cannot yet understand and a culture that is so different from our own. She has cried a few times, she tells us she doesn't like it, and yet she keeps going. She has learned to be brave! I am so proud.

Grace - Three Years Old

Next week, Grace turns three, or as she says it, "fuh-dee." Her birthday falls on the day we arrive in Thailand, so she will spend her special day on two planes, in two countries (Taiwan and Thailand), and totally zonked from 24 hrs of travel and a +15 hour time change.

So, what's Grace like these days?

She loves music. That's an understatement. Music moves Grace like nothing else. (Except sugar. In a weaker moment, she'd probably trade me for a chocolate donut with sprinkles.)

Grace spends most of her day singing. When she hears a new song, it takes just a few listens for her to memorize it, so she's developed quite a repertoire. These days, she particularly enjoys cycling through every song from every Daniel Tiger episode she's ever watched.

She also loves toying with her voice and words. She'll often take a normal song and sing it in a strange, robot voice. Or she'll take a normal word like "seaweed" and change it up to "seatweet."

She's incredibly affectionate. Grace loves being tickled, being held, and crawling into my lap to read a book. Every night before she goes to sleep, she asks for a "back-catch" (backscratch). This is not an example of her toying with words. "Back-catch" is just how she says it!

Grace has developed a strange and wild imagination. Sometimes, her hands are an airplane, her princess figurines are popcorn, or our family room carpet is a river. She has three imaginary friends, Kippy Kopp, Hoggy, and Bombom. They've gone on many adventures. She's recently started teaching Cora about them.

Last May, Grace developed the most intense, deep set fear of smoke detectors. This came completely out of the blue and robbed us all of several nights of sleep until we covered every little light on every smoke detector in our house with stickers. So much for checking to make sure they work.

Once, she saw an uncovered smoke detector out in the wild. When the little light flashed, she dove to the floor like a WWI soldier in a foxhole. The other day, she told me, "I used to be afraid of smoke detectors, but not anymore!" and asked me to peel off their stickers. I'm cautiously hopeful that this fear is now behind us.

Grace's favorite things these days include

• Storytime at the library.
• Small, enclosed spaces. I've found her climbing into the dryer and hiding in kitchen cupboards. She often begs me to build her forts and make her "doggy beds."
• Being my little girl. When we talk about her turning three, she always wants me to reassure her that she'll still be my little girl.
• Cora. Grace has perfected the big sister role. She is bossy, protective, sweet, and playful with her little sister.
• The TV show, Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. After a failed attempt at potty training Grace, Daniel Tiger potty trained 2.5 year old Grace in one 30 minute episode. God bless Daniel Tiger and all his over auto-tuned singing.
• Going to the playground (especially climbing ladders).
• When Michael holds her in his arms, twirling her and singing "Let's dance around the house!" She recently told us, "My favorite thing is dancing with Daddy" which promptly turned our hearts into puddles.
• Cheesin for pictures. Look at that smile!

Grace, I could have never thought you up. You are an amazing little kid. Mommy is so proud of you and loves you so much.

Halloween - A Mouse and a Butterfly

Last Halloween, when Grace was 20 months old and Cora was a newborn, we did absolutely nothing to celebrate because, well, Grace was 20 months old and Cora was a newborn. We were tired.

Since this is our last Halloween in the U.S. for a while, I decided to go for it. Only challenge: we're broke and trying to not accumulate new things like costumes that they only wear once. So, I somehow managed to piece together two costumes from things we had around the house and was thrilled with the result...

Here is Minnie Mouse and a butterfly dancing ring-around-the-rosy.

Here are two past Halloweens:
Halloween 2012
Halloween 2013

Sister Love

I absolutely love watching Grace and Cora's budding sibling relationship. They have their moments of sibling squabbles, especially Cora grabbing Grace's hair and Grace yanking toys out of Cora's hands, but for the most part, they really really love each other. When one cries, the other often cries too. Nothing gets Cora happier faster than Grace laughing. When Grace is playing alone, she often asks me to bring Cora over to play with her.

Here are two especially sweet interactions I don't want to forget:

~

After listening to a children's song that references being a best friend:

Michael: "Grace, who's your best friend?"
Grace: silence
Michael: Do you have a best friend?
Grace: thinks for a second "Cora!"

~

Cora's first word is "Grace." Her saying it usually goes down like this.

Cora hasn't seen Grace for a few minutes when suddenly Grace walks into the room where Cora is playing. Cora lights up and exclaims: "Grah, Gah, Gah!" i.e. "Grace, Grace, Grace!"

Grace - Two Years Old

Our Gracie turned TWO last week. 

This means that we are already 11% of the way through raising her. Considering she still wears diapers and thinks it's socially appropriate to hide behind her hands when we see friends, we certainly have a lot of training to before we shoo her out of the nest. This slightly freaks me out.

Regardless of how far we have to go, we've come a long way. Grace crossed some major milestones this past year. She learned how to walk, speak in full sentences, and sing. She went on her first international trip and became a big sister. Bravo, kiddo! That's a lot for one year!

What are some of Grace's favorite things these days?

Playing hide and go seek.

Music! Grace loves anything music related. We had been singing the song "Jesus Loves Me" for a few weeks when, one day, as she was walking out of the room, I began to play "Jesus Loves Me" on the piano. Watch the video to see her reaction and her little solo.

Since Grace loves music, she loves to sing sing sing all day long. It's so pleasant to hear. Her favorite song to sing is the ABC's. There have been many days where we've sung it at least three dozen times. Now, she's started changing it up. She likes to do plural ABC's "As Bs Cs Ds Es Fs Gs..." Another favorite version is this: "Ain Bain Cain Dain Eain Fain Gain..." She also does a Bing Crosby version where she purses her lips and sings as low as her little vocal chords can manage.

Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Or as Grace calls it, "Beauty AT the Beast." Sounds so much fiercer that way. We watch each song on the DVD every day. If we're riding in the car, she almost always requests the soundtrack. When she's throwing a tantrum, nothing cools her down faster than, "Little town, it's a quiet village..."

Skipping naps. The internet tells me kids are supposed to nap until they're three or four. Grace is well on her way to completely dropping her only nap. 

This roll and play dice/card game. We've played it for HOURS.

Standing on a chair in the kitchen helping me cook and eating scraps of everything. ("No, sweetie. That's raw pork. We need to cook it before you can eat it.")

Books. Grace continues to absolutely love reading. In addition to snuggling a stuffed dog and her blankie every night and naptime, she also snuggles several books. A couple of weeks ago, Grace prayed her first prayer. It went like this, "Dear Jesus, Thank you for the green book, the white book, the blue book, the yellow book, the blue book, the black book, and the green book."

Storytime at the library. Books, songs, and rhymes... of course she loves it! Here's a picture from storytime.

Happy birthday, Grace. I love you so, so, so much. It is such a privilege to be your mommy.

Little Buddies

When I started this little space on the internet, I never intended it to be a "mommy blog." In fact, this blog had already existed for a couple of years before I became a mom. However, since I don't have time to get on here much and my favorite posts to re-read are always the ones about my kids, I'm just going to own it and say that this is a mommy blog until it's not.

So without further ado, here are some sweet pictures of a budding sister relationship.

For some reason, Cora's face in this one cracks Michael and me up! "Whelp... guess I'm stuck."

Toddler in the House

Before having my own kids, the toddler stage puzzled me. I had no idea how to interact with those little people. Now that Grace is a toddler, I'm still puzzled and at times have no idea how to interact with my little person, but I'm leaning to love it. How could I not?

Playing in the garden.

Dirty bottom.

A conversation through the open window with our elderly neighbor.

Helping Daddy bring in the trash barrels.

See that face? She admires him so much.

Playing with glow sticks in the bathtub.

Naked Jedi running naked through the hallway, light saber in hand.

Wearing Daddy's shoes on her arms.

Wearing her sunglasses(ish).

Wearing her socks on her hands.

And she'll still sometimes snuggle like a baby.